Thursday’s Buzz: 4.21.11

Yalies may soon see drastic changes to the way they register for classes and read their grades. Yale College Dean Mary Miller said she hopes to add extracurricular activities and information on median course grades to undergraduates’ academic records. Miller also said a redesign of the Online Course Information and Selection websites could be in the works. Though she said all plans are contingent upon the hiring of a new University Registrar, administrators have previously said that the University could select a new registrar by the end of April.

Frank Limon could not have known what the Elm City had in store for him. It has been a tough year for New Haven’s police chief since he arrived Apr. 5 2010. Budgetary issues, union struggles and a rise in violent crime have all marred the public and internal cohesion of the force – and no one in the department has been as maligned as Limon. The chief’s officers have marched out of the building while on duty, told citizens to arm themselves in the wake of an ineffectual patrol division, and voted “No Confidence” in their leadership.

Administrators hope the new Yale-NUS College will provide them with a clean slate on which to redesign the liberal arts education. As administrators draft plans for the academic curriculum of the college that Yale is building with the National University of Singapore, they are thinking about ways to reshape the University’s traditional pedagogy. The environment of the new school will be more conducive to innovation than that of an established institution like Yale, administrators said, adding that it will be easier to justify similar changes at Yale if they succeed in Singapore first.